6 OSHA Compliance Requirements Most General Industry Companies Face

The other day, I was working with a customer who had just partnered with Convergence to begin improving her company’s current safety training program.

She’s a busy professional who wears many hats at work and has many responsibilities. One of them is to be sure the appropriate safety training is delivered to the workers at her company.

But she’s not a safety professional, and was a little confused about where to start and how to know what’s necessary. So we spent a little time with her, working things out, and while we did that, we passed some resources along to her.

OSHA Requirements That Apply to MOST General Industry Employers

The first section of OSHA’s general industry compliance guide includes “selected OSHA requirements that apply to many general industry employers.” (Note: All quoted text in this article is drawn from the OSHA Compliance Assistance Quick Start).

These requirements, as listed by OSHA, include:

Hazard Communication

Emergency Action Plans

Fire Safety

Exit Routes in the Workplace

Walking/Working Surfaces

Medical and First Aid

We’ll review each of those in the sections below.

In addition, we’ll give you some tips for training your workers on topics related to each of the sections. In doing that, we’ll provide some sample videos from our online safety training course library.

Hazard Communication Standard

The HazCom standard “is designed to ensure that employers and employees know about hazardous chemicals in the workplace and how to protect themselves.”

To help employers comply with the HazCom standard, OSHA offers a number of helpful resources, including:

The specific training about chemical hazards will vary from site-to-site and company-to-company. But other safety training topics to consider might be training on DOT/HazMat and chemical loading/unloading.

Walking/Working Surfaces

Yet another compliance requirement that the OSHA quick start suggests would apply to most companies involves walking and working surfaces.

As the guide says, “Floors, aisles, platforms, ladders, stairways, and other walking/working surfaces are present, to some extent, in all general industry workplaces. Slips, trips, and falls from these surfaces constitute the majority of general industry accidents. The OSHA standards for walking and working surfaces apply to all permanent places of employment, except where only domestic, mining, or agricultural work is performed.”

Medical and First Aid

The last requirement that OSHA’s guide lists in the section that may apply to all employers addresses medical and first aid.

As the quick start guide notes, “OSHA requires employers to provide medical and first-aid personnel and supplies commensurate with the hazards of the workplace. The details of a workplace medical and first-aid program are dependent on the circumstances of each workplace and employer.”

To help employers comply with this requirement, OSHA offers these resources:

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Jeffrey Dalto is an Instructional Designer and the Senior Learning & Development Specialist at Convergence Training. He's worked in training/learning & development for 20 years, in safety and safety training for more than 10, is an OSHA Authorized Outreach Trainer for General Industry OSHA 10 and 30, has completed a General Industry Safety and Health Specialist Certificate from the University of Washington/Pacific Northwest OSHA Education Center, and is a member of the committee creating the upcoming ANSI Z490.2 national standard on online environmental, health, and safety training.